“Education should be equally devoted to enriching the personal lives of students and to training students to be productive workers.”
GRE AWA Analytical Writing ISSUE Essay Sample Solution – 20
Education is the development of all aspects of a person’s personality. These could be moral, cultural, social, academic, professional, ethical, intellectual etc. I completely agree with the author’s statement that education should be equally devoted to enriching personal lives and training students for becoming productive workers.
The purpose of education is to make a student capable of living a self-sufficient life in a society. While it is very important for a person to support himself and earn his living, it is also important that he brings quality in his life with high morals, positive thinking and good knowledge of his surroundings. If any of these is lacking, the student becomes unadjusted in the society and is not able to live a healthy and satisfactory life. Such a situation can be seen as the failure of education.
If the education system is devoted too much towards enriching the lives of students and ignores to train them well to be productive workers, it is found that students do not acquire any specific skills. Enriching the lives of the students means giving them little knowledge of all subjects. However, it is not productive and the student becomes a jack of all trades and master of none. Learning specific skills is vital to a person’s life because it helps him to support himself as-well-as those dependent upon him. As a student passes out of school and completes his education, he is ready to face the world independently. He cannot be independent unless he earns his own living. For this he is required to have some professional qualification or skill that can help him to get jobs and work efficiently. If the education that he has attained lacked any sort of professional training, he will find that there are no takers of his services. For example, to get the job of an engineer, a student must have the required qualification as-well-as training for the job. He must have good knowledge of the related subjects like mathematics, physics and engine science. If he is taught other subjects like moral science, languages, art or other subjects not concerned with the field of an engineer, he will surely not get the job. It is only if he is trained for the job that he can perform his duties well as-well-as win the confidence of his employers.
On the other hand, if the syllabus concentrates more on the growth of productive aspect of a student’s personality and ignores imparting value education, it will again lead to the development of an unbalanced personality. It does train him well to perform his duties but he becomes incapable of handling non-professional issues. There are many issues and dealings which are not related to work. A person is required to understand and respect relations and form logical decisions based on his own reasoning and thinking. For this it is very important for him to understand what is right and what is wrong. This knowledge comes only if the student is
educated and taught to differentiate between different situations and decide what is best for him. Thus, it gives us a wider perspective and exposure to the world.
Hence, a balance of extracurricular activities and professional training is required to develop an all around personality. If it is incapable of enriching your lives or making you productive, it is the failure of the system as a whole.
“Success in any realm of life comes more often from taking chances or risks than from careful and cautious planning.”